( Lan Zhan, speaking a truth not realised yet in fullness: these are as his burial grounds, as unsettled, as unrested, as trapped and layered and younger, ah. That's the crux of it. They're younger, and so many.
Yet what for him is deeply, darkly familiar, what cacophony of voices had defined his sword-edge path through insanity and horror, what had been his close, ceaseless companion and the endless demands that invaded his mind, coiled around him like the cloying stench of the decay it embodied in spirit and flesh, this is not Lan Zhan's reality.
No, not with the man he's allowing himself to realise nuances of the depth to which he cares, voicing them only in acceptances and the way he feels panicked concern flare in his chest, sunflare bright, and oh, the sun has burned through his home before, his chest before, his empty, hollow core. Kneeling, he offers a water satchel to Lan Zhan; his hand, lighter than a bird at first, touching to Lan Zhan's shoulder. Touch needs inviting at some times in particular. He wouldn't strive to make this worse. )
Drink.
( He suspected. Heaviness instructed him in the unfortunate truth. )
You named it as the Burial Mounds. I sorrow that you were more right than we yet knew.
( All of this wreckage of a citadel, it is Yiling. Restless, incapable of letting go of what it holds onto, forever greedy, forever swallowing more whole. A place that had once been of normalcy, driven to darkness with the machinations of humanity. Now only the inhuman remained, so achingly reminiscent of what it meant, once, for life to be defined by its presence between death's beginning and end; where death served purpose, where bodies did not birth and grow and wane and decay to birth again with the dawn of a new day.
Where the dead did not lie uneasy under the waves, no rest granted, no salvation, nothing. Not even the strength of the life that is within the lighthouses' limits, instead a carpet upon which the mermaids and their own unrestful dead caper, hunt, and year. )
I'm here, Lan Zhan. You are not alone.
( For he knows what it was to be alone before that understanding, swallowed by it, choking on it. When the dead sing so loud, no other song can penetrate, and the kind of control that works would penetrate Lan Zhan in fractures that would bleed him dry. )
no subject
Yet what for him is deeply, darkly familiar, what cacophony of voices had defined his sword-edge path through insanity and horror, what had been his close, ceaseless companion and the endless demands that invaded his mind, coiled around him like the cloying stench of the decay it embodied in spirit and flesh, this is not Lan Zhan's reality.
No, not with the man he's allowing himself to realise nuances of the depth to which he cares, voicing them only in acceptances and the way he feels panicked concern flare in his chest, sunflare bright, and oh, the sun has burned through his home before, his chest before, his empty, hollow core. Kneeling, he offers a water satchel to Lan Zhan; his hand, lighter than a bird at first, touching to Lan Zhan's shoulder. Touch needs inviting at some times in particular. He wouldn't strive to make this worse. )
Drink.
( He suspected. Heaviness instructed him in the unfortunate truth. )
You named it as the Burial Mounds. I sorrow that you were more right than we yet knew.
( All of this wreckage of a citadel, it is Yiling. Restless, incapable of letting go of what it holds onto, forever greedy, forever swallowing more whole. A place that had once been of normalcy, driven to darkness with the machinations of humanity. Now only the inhuman remained, so achingly reminiscent of what it meant, once, for life to be defined by its presence between death's beginning and end; where death served purpose, where bodies did not birth and grow and wane and decay to birth again with the dawn of a new day.
Where the dead did not lie uneasy under the waves, no rest granted, no salvation, nothing. Not even the strength of the life that is within the lighthouses' limits, instead a carpet upon which the mermaids and their own unrestful dead caper, hunt, and year. )
I'm here, Lan Zhan. You are not alone.
( For he knows what it was to be alone before that understanding, swallowed by it, choking on it. When the dead sing so loud, no other song can penetrate, and the kind of control that works would penetrate Lan Zhan in fractures that would bleed him dry. )